Flier Fireworks At Tonight's HISD Board Meeting

There will be an interesting HISD board meeting later tonight at the Hattie Mae White Educational Support Center, and one of the topics for discussion won't be education issues.

District III Trustee Manuel Rodriguez, Jr. voted for the new stricter non-discrimination and anti-bullying policies passed back in August that protects district students and employees from harassment due to sexual orientation and gender identity or expression.

He was one of the three HISD school board members who were up for reelection in this cycle. While HISD Board President and District IV trustee Paula Harris and District VIII trustee Juliet Stipeche were easily reelected over their opponents, Rodriguez had a more contentious race to keep his District III seat.

He was facing stiff competition from challenger Ramiro Fonseca, a Houston Community College administrator who had the backing of the teacher's unions, the Houston GLBT Political Caucus and Texas state Senator Mario Gallegos.

Just before the November 8 election Rodriguez unleashed a homophobic attack flier aimed at Fonseca that fellow board trustee Stipeche criticized him for and Houston GLBT Political Caucus President Noel A Freeman described as “trash politics at its worst.”

“A homophobic bigot like this has no business making decisions that affect our children,” Freeman said.

The building political firestorm over the homophobic flier also caused the Houston Chronicle to take the rare step of pulling their endorsement of him.

A last-minute campaign flier for Rodriguez displays appalling homophobia. The flier urges recipients not just to vote for Rodriguez, but to vote against his opponent, Ramiro Fonseca, because he has been endorsed by the Houston GLBT Caucus, "the South's oldest civil rights organization dedicated solely to the advancement of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender rights." The flier further states that Fonseca has "spent years advocating for gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, transgender rights … not kids," and winds up with a pair of bullet points noting that he's 54 years old with no children and has a male partner.

That's obvious gay-bashing, of the kind that HISD rightly prohibits on the playground. It has no place on HISD's board.

Got that right.  And there's nothing wrong with "spending years advocating for gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, transgender rights."   By the way, Trustee Rodriguez, advocating for TBLG human rights is standing up for kids inside and outside our rainbow community.  

We have early voting here in Texas, and while Fonseca won on Election Day and probably picked up even more votes due to the homophobic flier, the ballots gained on weren't enough to offset the mail-in ballots and early voting lead Rodriguez piled up and he retained his seat by a mere 24 votes.

He apologized for the flier on Wednesday with a written statement:

"I am aware that some people have said they were offended by one of my ads, and I apologize to all of those people." Rodriguez said.

"I think the hurt has been deep in the community," Fonseca said to the Houston Chronicle in response to Rodriguez's statement.

Fonseca is still mulling over whether to ask for a recount in the razor thin election as the calls from various quarters of the city for Rodriguez's resignation from the HISD school board mount.  

There will be probably more than the usual amount of people in the board room auditorium tonight.  They will be patiently waiting to have their turn at the mike to speak during the public comment phase of the board meeting ready to as we say in the GLBT community 'read trustee Rodriguez'.  

And for you folks in the Houston area who can't make it to 4418 W 18th Street, tonight's meeting as all HISD board meetings are will be broadcast live on public access cable channels and replayed for your convenient viewing pleasure later..

It will be interesting to see how this continues to play out.

Mayor Parker Gets A Second Term!

It was close, but all you need to do to win a political campaign is get more than 50% of the votes cast in that election, and that's exactly what Houston Mayor Annise Parker did.

She had five minor opponents in this race and used some of that campaign war chest she'd built up.  

Mayor Parker spent $2.3 million to help ensure she got her message out there what she was doing for a city struggling with a tough economy.   She also reminded Houston citizens she was dealing with a $100 million budget shortfall when she took over at City Hall.


Mayor Parker had to lay off more than 750 city workers, consolidate departments, raise some fees and cut some deals to put off some of the city's bills until better times to do it. but the best part is she also managed to do so without raising taxes or laying off any firefighters or police officers.

And oh yeah, did I mention our resident wingnuts, conservafools, Reichers and hate preachers who tried their usual last minute gay baiting dirty political tricks but failed?. 

It's now the eighth straight citywide elections she's won since capturing an at large city council seat in 1997.
.

She'll get another two years before she faces the electorate one more time in 2013.   If she's successful, that will be her third and final term before she has to give up the mayor's chair due to term limits (which I fracking hate) on December 31, 2015.

But I'm very happy to know that when January 1, 2012 comes around she'll still be my hometown's mayor.

Congrats Mayor Parker!.

Boom! Dan Savage Gets Glitterbombed

There has been no love lost between Dan Savage and anyone in the rainbow community who is not a white gay male, TransGriot included.

He is loved by them, but the rest of us see Savage as racist, sexist, transphobic, biphobic, abelist, misogynistic, fill in the blank.

Well, I could keep waxing poetic about Savage's many sins, but what shocked many of his fans was when he became the first person within the rainbow community to get glitterbombed Tuesday.

While onstage at the University of Oregon on November 1 a group calling themselves the 'Dan Savage Welcoming Committee' gave him a nice sparkly welcome to campus.

On November 1st, 2011, an operative of the Dan Savage Welcoming Committee (DSWM) glitterbombed Dan while he was giving a Q&A at the University of Nike's Ford Alumni Center in Eugene, Oregon. During this session, the operative leapt to the stage and poured glitter over Dan's head as they shouted, "Dan Savage is a transphobe!" As they turned tail, they added, "Glitterbomb courtesy of the Dan Savage Welcoming Committee," and just before they got out the door, "He's a racist and misogynist and a rape-apologist, too!" The operative then fled the scene.

I haven't liked Dan Savage ever since he unleashed that racist tirade in the wake of the 2008 Prop 8 referendum loss in California blaming African American voters.  He never apologized to the Black community inside and outside LGBT circles for his throughly debunked '70% of African Americans approved Prop 8' meme he gave birth to that still surfaces at times in the testy discourse between Black and white GLBT people.

It is so pervasive it has yet to be taken out of the Wikipedia article on African-Americans despite it being repeatedly crushed since 2009 under a mountain of statistics and articles that pegged the actual African American support at 58%

But back to Savage. In the meantime Dan's Vanillacentric Fan Club was scratching their collective heads trying to figure out why their hero is so hated by the rest of the rainbow community despite the fact he created the 'It Gets Better' campaign.  

Yep, he had his broken clock moment creating 'It Gets Better' in the wake of the unacceptable spike in TBLG suicides and says he's trying to evolve already on his fill in the blank 'ism' failures, but the glee (pun intended) in the chocolate trans, bi and SGL community and the rest of the rainbow Net over this latest glitterbombing was off the charts.

And he needs to look in the mirror and ask himself why.

Kim K Just Blew That 'Sanctity Of Marriage' Talking Point For You Haters

Kim Kardashian's marriage only lasted 72 days and netted her a reported $18 million dollars in profits.

But yet the right wing marriage equality opponents are always screaming that straw man argument about how allowing gay peeps to marry will destroy the 'sanctity of marriage' for straight peepul or the howler I heard in the Maryland marriage equality debate earlier this year, open the door for android marriage.

Bull feces.  As a matter of fact while I'm on the subject of marriage, stop messing with trans people's ability to get married.  

Because you haters are on increasingly shaky legal ground in terms of keeping DOMA and those unconstitutional anti-gay marriage amendments in place as long as possible.

We know you want to continue that foaming at the mouth hatred of the rainbow community going to keep your conservahate 'family' orgs coffers filled with cash from your suckers donors, but leave us transpeeps out of your drama.  

We have enough problems with people mistaking non same gender trans marriages for same gender ones.

We also have cis people deliberately misgendering trans people in a non same gender marriage to attack our ability to get married for their fiscal or political gain at our expense. 

Seems to me by this latest sterling example that you straight folks are doing a bang up job by yourselves of destroying the sanctity of marriage without any assistance from us.

Let us rainbow community people have the opportunity to get in on the fun of getting married and divorced for 72 days or less or show y'all how to do it right and get married until death do us part.
  

And it's gleefully delicious to the TBLG community that Kim Kardashian just became the rainbow community poster girl who is helping our community point that glaring hypocrisy out.